Hi, my name is Charles. I’m a psychotherapist and counsellor with 16 years experience in supporting individuals and couples to live more fully and authentically, to improve their mental health, and to improve their relationships. I have a private practice in Penrith NSW, with appointments available Thursdays and Fridays. Skype appointments available on Tuesdays.
Individual Counselling the focus tends to be on specific challenges or problems in living that you may be facing, or it may focus on supporting you to make specific adjustments in your life circumstances, or helping you to reach important goals and/or fostering your wellbeing. This is typically achieved through the identification of your strengths, developing your problem solving skills, and changing your unhelpful thoughts, feeling and behaviours. As a general but flexible guideline individual counselling is a short term process lasting 1 to 12 sessions.
Psychotherapy focuses on our relationships with others, the integration of aspects of our lived experience that we may not be comfortable with and the clarification of our worldview. This is done by building awareness and insight to help with making better choices and positive changes. The therapeutic relationship is the foundation for a safe and positive experience – as it requires in depth and wide ranging work from both of us; the primary focus of this work is to assist you in making sense of your values, motivations, emotions and your ways of being in the world. The work will focus on the your here-and-now lived experiences but may also draw connections to past and future. Psychotherapy is generally a long-term process of 12 sessions or more.
Relationship Therapy: Research shows that relationships last when people in those relationships become good friends, are not afraid of conflicts but learn to manage them, and when they create ways to support one another’s hopes and plans for the future. The goal of relationship therapy is to help you develop the skills of healthy relationships. The time frame of relationship therapy are flexible but on average takes around 16 weeks.
Health and Wellness Coaching uses theories from Positive Psychology, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) including mindfulness interventions. It is typically short-term and deals with a particular health or wellness goal. Its aim is supporting you in making a number of behavioural, attitudinal and motivational changes which will help you overcome a variety of health related concerns. Health and wellness coaching can assist you with adjusting to acute and chronic illnesses, making changes to your lifestyle to improve your physical health (such as poor diet and nutrition, physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol consumption and problematic drug use.)
Types of therapies I offer